Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1887-04-20
what a Woman POliticiau wOula DO


Chicago Herald: MRS. Helen NJ.
Cougar, of Indiana, was the self con-
stituted leader of some of the women
of Kansas, who recently voted for the
first time at municipal elections. She
has been woman's suffrage advocate
and temperance revivalist. One of
her first performances on arriving in
Kansas was to make an offensive and
defensive political alliance with the
celebrated d. r. Anthony, a brawling
politician, who has figured in more
shooting affrays than any man in
America who still lives. Occupying
this high position, she ought to elevate
society at Leavenworth, and, after a
campaign made shockingly indecent
and scandalOus us much by her bitter
ness and partisanship as by anything
else, she now refers her sisters of other
states to the foul mess that has been
made in Kansas as an attractive ex-
ample and the strongest argument
why woman suffrage should be ex-
tended throughout the union, more es-
pecially in municipal elections. In
Mrs. Cougars two-c olumn report of
her operations in the west, not a sin
gle intelligent reason is given why the
franchise should be extended. Doubt
less some excellent reasons could be
presented, but neither in Mrs. Cougars
letter, in her recent public perform
ances, nor in the present situation of
affairs in Kansas are any to be found.
She is palpably q fanatical partisan.
She assumes that a republican is an
educated, patriotic, honest and law
abiding citizen, and that democrat is
an ignorant, degraded, dishonest and
an unpatriotic citizen. There are no
exceptions. The republican is a tenn
perate man. The democrat is whis-
ky drinker, wife beater and child starv-
er. Arguing from this standpoint, no
calling can be more honorable than the
one which undertakes the triumph of a
republican over a democrat, and, on
the principle that the one is unvarying
right and the other inevitably wrong,
that any means which will elevate the
one and crush the other must be praise
worthy. To such outlandish and pre-
posterous extremes does the senseless
admixture of political prejudice and
private conceptions of right and wrong
lead we'll meaning people.
Mrs. Cougars essential dishonesty
as a politician is exhibited by her glee-
full proclamation that whereas before
the passage of the Accommodating wo-
man's-suffrage law in Kansas-native
born women alone being enfranchised-
there were many cities with democrat
ic mayors, now there is not one; and
her capaciry for injustice ON a more
colossal scale is proved by her clipper
suggestion that all of the republicans
of other states need do to accomplish
the same glorious result is by equally
unfair and revolutionary methods to
their assistance. No more immoral
and contemplate proposition was ever
made in a country where partyism
often runs mad on both sides, but rare
ly reaches such depths of scoundrelism
as this. What would be thought and
said in Kansas if Georgia legislature
enfranchised white women and not
black women, or if an Indiana legisla-
ture should enfranchise the women in
democratic counties. and not the wo-
men in republican counties? Morally
these would be on par with the thing
that has been done in Kansas, anc
which Mrs. Cougar would extend ovel
the whole country, if she could. Mo-
for their womanheod are portion o.
the women of Kansas enfranchised
but for their votes, that corrupt anC
fanatical party may perpetuate it
power, even though society be debauch
ed and the principle of American equal
ity be lost forever"
There is nothing in the situation il
Kansas to make woman suffrage at
tractive to decent men and women, ant
there is much in the conduct and ideas
} of Mrs. Cougar, il she is to be accepted
as type of the woman politician. Il
make men already sick of the debauch
cry Of politics, unwilling to invite the
upbuilding of an element which i;
openly and defiantly dishonorable, ex
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